In Part 2 of the Q & A with Liam Bentley, we take a look at the youth side of the NPL, as well as the cup competitions for men and women!
In case you missed the other segments:
Let’s just get straight into it!
The NPL brief is to promote youth and produce players for the next generation, do you think we’re seeing the benefits of that already this season?
Definitely. You look at the average age of the NPL squads and this is anecdotally, but we’ve gone from about 26-27 to most clubs being an average age of 23-24. So we’ve dropped 3 or 4 years out of that and I think what’s worked really well is having that squad of 20 and actually forcing the promotion of youth, those next best players coming through. 20 is not a big number. It’s really not in a 26 round season so having those clubs when you get a couple of injuries or loss of form, having those players coming through, the next best players coming through from the U20s are really good.
And even if you look at the U20s, it’s probably closer to an U18 competition because of so many U20s getting pushed into the seniors and putting those fringe players into the senior squad so I think we’ve done really well in that.
On the U20s, Rule 6.3.4. states “Any NPL Under 20 or NPL Junior may play in the Senior NPL or Senior NPL1 league for a maximum of 5 matches without being included in the Player Points cap.” How is this beneficial to the competition?
The rule is there for one reason, and it’s there to keep the integrity of the points cap. Now we know how many A-League youth players and top quality youth players who are now playing in the NPL, which is fantastic. What we didn’t want to happen was someone to get to the 275 points allowed, then sign players like Luke O’Dea, Alistair Bray and a couple of other players and putting them in their U20s squad and then playing every single week [in the seniors]. That would mean they’d realistically end up with a much higher points cap.
It’s all to do with the integrity of it. If someone’s a decent player, they’re going to be in the squad. You’ve got to remember, you’ve got a match day squad of 16, then you’ve got another 4 until you get to your U20s. Sitting on the bench is fine, that doesn’t count as one of the five games. So you actually have to be getting on the park five times, and you pretty much have to jump nine players and the senior squad five times over the first half of the season for that to happen, which has happened once or twice, but it’s not a major problem. If someone’s good enough, they’re going to get into the senior squad.
Also players leave the senior squad, amateur players walk out because you can’t hold them there, they’d leave the senior squad, then the next player that you have to fill that gap is another U20s player. So if you’ve got a player who’s on that fringe of 3 or 4 games, they can then take that step up. I understand the initial feeling of it’s kind of backwards compared to what the NPL’s all about but I think having the points cap is crucial to the integrity of the competition. I think it’s about one step back for ten steps forward if we can keep them in the points cap.
What if the club can’t let go of that extra spot and they’ve got a really promising U20s player? What happens?
It’s probably a sacrifice we’ll have to make. U20 players do not become superstars overnight and anyone who has genuinely got that potential will be in and around the senior side. You’ve got to remember to keep within the points cap, most teams actually have players who are ranked 17, 18, 19 and 20 tending to be U20 players anyway. They tend to be those players who make that step down and play in the U20s on a weekly basis when they’re not picked for the senior squad.
They’re not going to fill them up with 28, 29-30 year olds to sit on the bench because it costs too many points so they’re bringing in those U20s . You’re then looking at those U20s probably being the ones that have actually just kicked on really well and want to make that step up to the senior squad.
It’s awkward, there are going to be one or two situations and there has been one or two where clubs have said, this is where we’re at and it’s probably a sacrifice we have to make in one player. You’re looking at the fact that if you’re going to play five games, first you have to realise, to get into the senior squad, you’re already at maybe 10 or 11 games before they hit that.Round 13, 14 and 15 is when the transfer window opens and you can then move them up into the senior squad.
So realistically it’s not like we’ve got superstar 19 year olds missing out on a full season of football. At maximum they’re going to miss a month of senior football, but they’ll still be playing in the U20s and still training with the seniors. So I think it’s a sacrifice that we’ll have to make to keep the points cap there.
Going even lower down into the junior ranks, 28 clubs were split into two zones. It was a decision that raised eyebrows, but do you think it’s worked well so far?
I think it has. There’s no denying that it’s going to take time to calibrate. It was rushed through this year, there’s no two ways about that. When we looked at the junior structure we had a couple of options. We had put them all in the one league, and everyone plays each other once. That’s a 30 week season basically and we can’t do that because we don’t have the grounds to do that at the moment, especially with that short notice.
Then there was the choice to split them and go with the seniors so that meant NPL juniors and NPL1 juniors. A couple of reasons why that wouldn’t work, first of all we want teams playing at their correct level. For instance, if Green Gully got relegated from NPL down to NPL1, yet every single one of their teams at junior level came top two, you’ve then got a team who’s a top two NPL team playing in the bottom division, which we didn’t want to happen. The juniors should be where they are on their merits. If you got a good U13s team but bad U14s team they should be where they are on their merits.
I think geographically as well the travel is an issue for a lot of clubs, especially when we’re talking about the regional clubs as well. Not just for the regional clubs to come to metropolitan Melbourne but also if you’ve got a couple of regional teams, everyone can handle going to one or two regional games. Once you start getting to four, five, six games in regional Victoria, plus having to travel for some teams in the west like a Melbourne Knights or St Albans who also have to go away to Oakleigh, Springvale White Eagles, Dandenong Thunder, it’s quicker to go to Ballarat and Geelong from that side of town as well. That has to be taken into account.
We also want clubs to attract players on their merits and we don’t want players to go to a club because they are an NPL club and not an NPL1 club. We want them to go to their local club and we want them to go to a club who are doing the right thing. Taking all that into the mix and splitting them regionally and then basically having the two leagues of 15 has worked for the purpose of this year. The board have already said at the end of this year we’ll have a look at the structure and see how it works. We’re having constant monthly meeting with the NPL clubs and we’re getting feedback from them as well. We’ll look at what the best option is for next year given we’ll have a little bit more time.
What are the options on the cards at the moment?
Similar to what I was saying there in terms of everyone playing everyone in one season. If we’ve got 30 weeks to do that, and if we’ve got the councils, the clubs on board that might be an option. It may be the best option is what we’ve been doing now and might be the best option is we split them but actually get a longer season in terms of we don’t actually do the split until after two thirds of the season. There’s nothing strictly on the cards at the moment, it’s more so let’s figure what worked and what didn’t. We’re over half the season just now so we don’t really know what’s worked and what hasn’t until you to the end. We can get an indication at the end of the season.
Let’s talk about the St Albans situation. Their point deduction has been well publicised, and many have disagreed with that ruling. Can you clear up the issue?
First of all I’d like to say that they have genuinely worked hard to get their teams up. They were in a pretty unfortunate situation of being in a busy area for NPL clubs. With everything that went on, there were bits that were taken away for the first year, but the one criteria we were very strong on this year, before anyone had to hand the licence agreement back in was that the mantra teams were the mantra teams, and you had to field those teams. It is critically important that pathway flows through.
St Albans were struggling were struggling at the start but they did do a lot of really good work such as being to schools and other things. Despite what the image is we’ve actually been talking to St Albans quite often on this issue, whilst this was happening and post what happened. We basically forced our clubs to have these mantra teams for a reason, and I don’t think anyone disagrees with the reason of having a genuine pathway all the way through.
Clubs went a pretty long way to make sure they had those teams, they’ve busted their chops and worked really hard to get there. To then go to one club and say for the club to not play that team, it’s pretty black and white in the Rules of Competition that everyone signed up to, you can’t earn senior points while you don’t field all your junior teams. There was no doubt that that was the punishment for not doing fielding a team.
Allowing a club to get away with that compromises the integrity of the licence agreement. If we let one club away with one team, I’ll put my hand up and say does anyone want to not play a team for a couple of weeks, there would probably be at least seven or eight clubs that would say we’d like a couple a weeks off because we can’t put a team out. That’s quite hard to do in terms of a league fixture. You might be coaching a club and your next opponents decide to cancel because they can’t play a team, then you can go a month without a game. That’s tough.
Without sounding too autocratic, everyone signed up knowing what the terms were. St Albans and other clubs signed up knowing they had to field those teams. They also knew who else was offered a licence within their region, so they knew the task that was ahead of them. I’m sure St Albans would admit that, they knew it was a task. I don’t think any of us thought it was going to be as tough for St Albans as it was. But if we compromise that part of the licence agreement, where does it end?
This is the first time we’ve had an agreement in place with the clubs. It’s generally been you come and play, and you play under the Rules of Competition. We’ve got the licence agreement happening now. Do we then say, don’t worry about your coaches; don’t worry about your finances; don’t worry about community engagement, where does it end? That’s the thing for us. If we allow one club to not comply with the licence agreement, it opens up a can of worms for us. It’s tough and we are working behind the scenes to look at some solutions short term and long term for this specific problem, but it’s not something that’s going to be addressed in the next week or two.
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Onto the the Women’s State Knockout cup now, why were the seedings removed allowing fixtures like Ashburton vs Heidelberg in Round 1, while having a series of byes to State 3 sides?
That was actually the clubs that asked for that. We had seedings in the Pelada Cup and at the start of the last season we were negotiation a few different areas. The majority of the clubs said they wanted the open draw all the way through so I was happy with that. Given the numbers it’s quite hard to forecast how many women’s teams are going to take it up, just because the season starts a little bit later, it’s going to be hard for women’s teams to get themselves ready. But it was something the clubs asked for to start with.
So what that the case with the geographical divisions as well? Because there was one instance where Boroondara had to travel down to Torquay to face Surf Coast FC on a Wednesday night.
That was the impression that was given and the feedback that was given from the clubs. They wanted a fully open draw.
Will the seedings be back next season then?
I don’t know to be honest, and I’m quite happy to have that conversation. We changed the men’s cup this year and it’s going to change next year with the FFA Cup so it’s open to talk to the clubs about that. We have a forum at the end of the yeah where people can put things forward, and I guess NPL is going to play a big part in that as well, just how the league structure pans out next year so we may have a look at that at the tail end of this year.
What can be done to encourage more teams to participate to eliminate the high amount of byes in the earlier rounds?
The number of byes is always a false indication. We’ve got the biggest state cup in the country for men, and even then we had 27 byes in the first round of that. Just because once you get past 64 teams, unless you get to the full 128, you’re going to have a lot of byes.
The clubs in that lower level of football, State 3 and State 4, half of them have no idea what it’s about, so there’s a big education drive has to come from us about what it is, what it can get you and that type of thing. We made the Dockerty Cup this year mandatory for every State League team, and that is something we’re looking at maybe not next year given the flux we’ll be in with the NPL, but in the future say as part of it your team entry fee goes up by X amount of dollars, and that covers your cup entry, then everyone is a part of the cup.
Women’s clubs and teams are never as ready, just because of the timing of the season so I guess probably just education early on when team entries come in, to let them know that they’ll be a part of the cup as well.
Earlier in the Dockerty Cup, there were a couple of teams who were forced to forfeit because they hadn’t registered their players. Will there be something done to ensure that doesn’t happen again?
There will always be more education on that, there will always be more information given out to the clubs. But the cold hard facts are 95% of the clubs have done it right, and if that many are getting it right then clearly the message is out there. A few clubs that probably weren’t ready, and I’m sure they probably won’t make the same mistake again next year, especially when it’s the FFA Cup and it’s all the way through. It’s something that some clubs have got to make sure that their house is in order at the start of the season and we’ll keep educating them and putting messages out there.
Has the Dockerty Cup been more of a success this year compared to the others?
It’s hard to tell really. The first year we brought it back it was a really big success, we’ve had a bit of lull last year but the FFA Cup qualification is huge. We’ve seen South Springvale get through last night, and whoever else gets through it’s massive. The opportunity is not just to win a Dockerty Cup, which has a pretty proud tradition, but there’s now that added bonus that you could draw Sydney FC at home if you work your way through the club. South Springvale have shown you don’t have to be an NPL club to do that. You could be a State League club who were plying their trade in State League 2 last year and potentially being drawn against an A-League club for a game live on Fox Sports which is amazing for a club at that level.
Many of the games in this year’s Dockerty Cup were played in mid-week, and it’s understandable given the late implementation of the NPL throwing off the initial calendar. But is there going to be a change to ensure the NPL and the Cup and co-exist including cup specific weekends?
Our original calendar prior to the NPL clubs being awarded had three specific weekends plus three weekend’s before the season. So there were six weekend rounds out of the total of 8 rounds that had to be played. The cup final is also on a weekend. The Quarter Finals may have had to been played in midweek even in the original calendar but when we went from a 12 team league to a 14 team league, we then had to find extra rounds.
We didn’t even have any catch-up rounds for the Premier League so we’ve had to squeeze it in as best we could. We could have played the Premier League and given them four midweek rounds, but realistically we’re at the point now where there are only seven or eight of the 28 clubs still involved. So we’d rather put the cup rounds in midweek, and keep the majority of people playing on the weekends. Yes there will be more done and given that it will be all the way through next year there will be a slightly different way of doing it as well.
That brings the end of Part 2, and we will bring you The Women’s Game in Part 3, which covers the details of how the WPL will conclude this season, as well as some hints towards what we can expect with the Women’s NPL for 2015.
So stay tuned for that tomorrow!
Jump back to Part 1: The NPL